


To Hear Your Voice

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 14:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10492686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: They are the girls with stardust glimmering in their eyes and the pulsing swells of the wind keeping time with their breath.(Rin and Ruri escape Academia on their own power. Magic and a little bit of brute force are involved.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Rin/Ruri has become one of my favorite arc v ships and I don't know how this happened considering they never exchanged a single word but. I love them... This is I think my first shot at writing them with their fully canon personalities.  
> I tried to emulate one of my favorite fic writer's style for some parts. It was a lot of fun and I might do something similar in the future, so let me know if it worked or not!

On the fifth day of her imprisonment, a quiet Sunday when the first of her hopes begin to abandon her, Ruri hears a voice. “ _Can you hear me_?” comes the whisper on the wind, clear but hesitant, as if she’s afraid that her words will reach no one.

“ _Yes_ ,” Ruri breathes, and watches her words fly out the barred windows of the tower and catch on the wind like autumn leaves. Her eyes trace them as far as she can see, watching the curve of the yellow letters as they twist and bend, fluttering without regard to shape or form.

They curl around the distant towers of Academia, so close but set so far, and she loses the soft glow of the words in the dull brick of the cloudy afternoon. She waits, straining to hear a response above the low hum of the wind. Below the courtyards are dim and deserted. She closes her eyes and dreams of a faraway place, living in the world of her memories, wavering and too-bright.

Ruri sits lost by the window until the stars have long since begun to dapple the murky black of Fusion’s sky. It is the world of her hopes and dreams. Her past, silent and painted in fading pastels.

When she opens her eyes, she is almost afraid to breathe.

There is a light on in the furthest tower.

* * *

“ _Are you there?”_ comes the voice, blowing in on the gentle breeze that flutters the curtains. Ruri scrambles to her feet, races to the window. Her hands grasp the rough bars, her face presses up close.

_“Yes,”_ she replies, “ _Yes. Can you hear me?”_

She holds her breath. The sound of machinery moving down in the courtyards below dulls, turns soft as sound through cotton- but the voice, the voice filters through clear, like a whisper at her ear. _“Oh, good. I was so worried… Are you okay? Did they take you too?”_

Ruri nods, then immediately feels a bit silly. “ _Yes. But I’m okay. My brother is coming for me.”_

“ _That’s good,_ ” says the voice, _“I have someone coming for me, too. His name is Yuugo. And I’m Rin. What about you?”_

_“Ruri. Kurosaki Ruri. I’m from Heartland.”_ She pauses, thinks, then says- _“Is this magic?”_

A little breath, a brief silence. A laugh, caught delicate between taken aback and flattered. _“Well… I guess it is.”_

_“Can you do anything else?”_ she asks, though she means _can you get us out of here?_

“ _Unfortunately,”_ says Rin, a little flat, ” _This is all I can do. Oh, and I can make it snow in the winter. Though I didn’t ever do that much. It was always cold enough in the city without my help.”_

_“The city?”_

Rin hums. “ _My home. It’s… Well, it’s-“_

The creak of machinery from below roars back loud and clear, and Ruri flinches back from the bars at how it grates. Into the afternoon she calls, hesitant- “Rin?”

But her words, gentle green drawing three spindly letters in the space beyond the window fall like stones from the sky. In the moment of silence where the dueling ancient gears cease, Ruri thinks she hears them hit the ground. 

* * *

Ruri knows she should not press her luck. But she has never been the type to linger in cowardice, though her fears may be great. Her grandmother had always called her much like her brother, in that regard. She thinks- Shun is coming for her. For them. It gives her courage. When her lunch is delivered, she asks, sounding tentative and weak, “Can you… Can you tell me about the other prisoner?”

The small boy in the red coat startles. Ruri watches him carefully. He seems quite honestly alarmed. He stutters out, “We- we don’t have any other pris- I mean, guests here. Um. I think. It’s, um. It’s just you.”

He speaks as if the idea is absurd. Ruri feels, suddenly, quite faint. The boy sets her lunch tray down on her desk, and his hand freezes halfway towards her, as if he’s not sure he’s allowed to help steady her or not.

“I’m fine,” she says, though her voice is unsteady. The boy lingers for another moment, then pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and steps back.

“Right. If you’re not feeling any better after you eat, I can bring you some medicine or a doctor.” He smiles up at her. She supposes he means to be reassuring. If any part of her left could think to trust him, she supposes it might be.

She returns his smile, and hopes he does not notice how strained it is. “Thank you.”

He lingers as she sits down at her desk, picks up her spoon. She takes a bite of something flavorless. It seems to appease him, so Ruri takes another as he backs out of the room. The moment the door swings closed behind her and the lock clicks, the spoon clatters to the tray and Ruri races to the window.

_”Rin,”_ she asks, _“Rin. You are real, aren’t you?”_

_“Of course I am_ ,” says the voice, vehement. It is exactly how Ruri expects a delusion to sound. Utterly convinced of its own existence.

“ _But that boy says he doesn’t know anything about you.”_ She knows she is hysterical. Over a lie, or over ignorance, of all things- but she need this. She hopes Rin won’t think lesser of her for it.

_“I’ll send you something,”_ Rin says, _“Something important. It’ll be there in the morning, I promise. Is that okay?”_

Ruri takes a deep breath. “ _Thank you. I’m sorry.”_

_“Don’t be sorry,”_ Rin replies, “ _I know how hard it is to believe that anything even exists outside these drab old towers.”_

That night, as always, Ruri draws a line through her makeshift calendar. It has been two weeks since her capture. She closes her eyes as she goes to sleep, and does not think of anything but Shun, one step closer to her with every passing day.

* * *

There is a small bell waiting for her on the windowsill when she wakes up, gold and glinting pleasantly in the early morning light. They lack for nothing here, so long as what they want is not freedom or their decks. Ruri asks the boy for a ribbon to tie up her hair at breakfast, and by lunch she’s presented with a set of dozens on a golden tray set on her dresser. Ruri pulls a gentle cream from it and loops it through the bell, ties her hair up with it. The ring of it is pleasant when she moves her head, quiet enough so as not to be obnoxious but just loud enough to be reassuring.

She is not alone.

* * *

She smells like smoke. The world is all aflame and the earth shakes with the impact of the giants as their feet crush stone and arms topple the towers that mar the sky where their peaks scrape the underside of the clouds.

Ha, Ruri laughs, as she watches the familiar scene crumble, observing from the skies. The world begins to crumble as the screams begin, as they echo loud in her ears, like they do so often in her dreams-

It will burn. It will scorch and fall and the ruins swallowed up by the earth as it cracks under the weight that it has created-

“ _Are you okay?”_ asks the whisper. It pulls Ruri into awareness. She’s shaking. She opens her mouth to answer Rin, gets as far as the smooth start of “ _I-_ ” before her breath catches hard in her throat.

She tries again. “ _I-_ “

She inhales, sharp, involuntary. She stifles her breath against the pillow, trying to prevent what comes next.

_“Go back to sleep,_ ” Rin says. Her words curl around Ruri, vowels warm and comforting like arms around her shoulders. At the edges of her consciousness, already fading, Ruri hears the sound of humming, a melody that she doesn’t know but feels familiar all the same.

The image that follows her to sleep, that lingers longest behind her eyelids before sleep fades everything to black is the towers of Academia crumbling as the sea rises up to take the isle and all the horrors it holds.

It’s upsetting. Ruri has never thought herself to be cruel.

* * *

The air is different. Ruri wakes, and the air tastes different. Wrong in a way that she can’t identify.

She says, flat, “They aren’t coming.” She doesn’t mean for Rin to hear. But the air is different, and Rin knows. Perhaps she knew even before Ruri did; Rin was always earlier to rise-

_“What do we do?”_

And there is no whisper carried by the wind that Rin does not know.

_“If no one is coming for us, then… We just break ourselves out.”_

* * *

It is foolish, in many ways. She doesn’t even know if Rin’s ears are pierced. But the bell in her hair rings, and she commits the last few words to the page. They are foolish words dedicated to a brilliant girl, and if she can return even a fraction of the courage that Rin has helped her find, then-

Ruri lets out a long breath and stands before the tiny window. The letter is bunched in her hand around one of her earrings, and she worries the edges of it.

_Please,_ she entreats the wind, _send this to her._

After a last moment, she nudges them close up against the bars. The night is quiet, and the warm breeze barely ruffles the edge of the note.

_Please_ , she begs. “I need you to do this.”

A gust of wind blows sharp through the bars, carrying with it the taste of something fresh, an anticipation like the changing of the seasons. Overhead, the gulls cry.

“Thank you,” Ruri says. The wind that had blown her hair back from her shoulders hadn’t ruffled the paper in the slightest.

When she wakes the next morning, it is gone.

* * *

Their plan creaks into action on an unassuming Thursday morning, when the rising sun is hidden behind the fluffy white clouds and the cries of gulls carry through the heavy doors of their tower cells.

“Breakfast,” calls the student in charge of bringing her daily meals. Ruri knows him now to be a kind boy, unsuited for the hell that is the battlefield of Heartland. A weak duelist, if only for his lack of confidence in his own abilities. A blessing in disguise, that insecurity, Ruri thinks. Heartland would have broken him. It strikes her, for a moment, that she wishes it was anyone else.

She takes a long breath, braces herself for the fall, and screams with all of her might.

The hollow clatter of the serving tray as it hits the ground. The clang of the bowl, the light ring of the silverware. The sound of the key in the lock.

Ruri sways and falls in slow motion.

She is well aware of how she looks- delicate, weak and beautiful. The little bird kept safe in her cage. _My bones are so fragile,_ she begs the boy, _if I hit the ground, they will break_. He runs for her, hands outstretched.

He fancies that he can save her, this princess trapped in her tower. This is what he does not know: She has taken lessons in various martial arts since she was seven and insisted on following her brother to his. She has fought her way through the streets of her ruined Heartland. One mistake made chasing a ghost down a dark alley does not make her weak. Five weeks spent prisoner in a place that has no regard for her does not make her helpless.

The boy’s grip is scarcely on her before she has him pinned to the ground, pulling his keys from his belt and rolling them through her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because she is.

She bolts from the room and locks it behind her before the boy can gather his wits. She doesn’t want to see his reaction.

(She’s not even sure what she wants it to be.)

* * *

“I am afraid,” says the moon, “that I cannot let you pass.”

Ruri does not have a duel disk. It was the only thing taken from her upon her imprisonment. But she smiles and throws her arms wide, and she pulls at every bit of that bravery that Rin calls _magic_.

“Come dance with me again,” she commands. Feathers brush against her arm, white and glowing, iridescent in the light of the just-risen sun. When they disperse, flying on the wind around her guard, her disk is on her arm, her cards stacked nearly in their places.

And what a day, she thinks, to watch the moon’s eyes widen in surprise. “Duel!”

The duel is short. There are cards in her deck that she does not recognize and a quiet voice that whispers dark from the back of her mind that she has taken upon herself a task too great- but her victory is quick in spite of it all.

“I’m not the same girl I used to be,” Ruri tells herself. It is not so hard a thing to believe, anymore.

Soldiers flood the steps just as she moves to start down them- _“You’ve gotten ahead of me,”_ she chides the breeze as it picks up, setting her hair aflutter around her shoulders. She can see the far tower of Academia on the distance, barren and cold.

There is no answer- but she does not need one.

Ruri turns her back on Academia’s solders, then races towards the edge of the platform and jumps.

* * *

The wind catches her and wraps her up in its spell, trapping her in the moment of weightless flight before gravity sees fit to realize that she doesn’t have wings. Ruri breathes, sucks in a grand breath, and she can’t help the laugh that spills over- it feels exactly like riding the jet coaster in Heartland.

When gravity returns to her, she falls gently into a pair of waiting arms.

“You’re here,” Ruri says. Rin smiles down at her, bright and beautiful. A single feathered earring dangles down from beneath her short hair. Ruri ducks her head, and the bell in her hair rings, filling the space between them.

Rin sets her down gently on the monster they’re riding- a winged thing that cuts through the wind swift and with an ease that speaks more of controlling it than riding it.

“I’m glad,” Rin says, and Ruri almost loses sight of her smile to the sun silhouetting Rin on the horizon. She reaches out a hand to Rin’s, clasps it strongly, just to see Rin smile again.

“How far can we go?” Ruri asks, then drops Rin’s hand to wave to the skies, “Like this.”

Rin frowns, the puff of her cheeks almost a pout. “Not very far. We’ll have to make it through Academia to find the tech to get us home.”

Down below, a siren blares. Rin looks the slightest bit put-out as she begins their descent. “And I guess it just got a lot harder.”

Academia’s soldiers surround them the moment they set down in the courtyard.

“How do you want to handle this?” Rin asks, as her monster disappears in a glimmer of light, “I have a few ideas, but…”

The first set of soldiers advances, duel disks flashing to life. Ruri considers. “No mercy. We’ll take what we want from them and then get home.”

Rin laces their fingers together and laughs, brighter than the sound of her bells. “I have the feeling,” she says, “that we’re going to make a great team. Let’s take them out.”


End file.
